Otherwise Known as Foxtail

Two years ago, at age 36, on what amounted to little more than a dare, I was persuaded to jam my feet into heavy, stiff boots, affix them to two long pieces of waxed fiberglass, don every piece of wicking insulated clothing I owned, and brave single digit temperatures in order to hurl myself down a snowy slope in the Chugach Mountains. After 2 hours of private instruction, I was amazed at how easily I was making my way down the beginner slopes. I spent the entire first day, where the high temp never quite made it above +4, slipping & sliding down Alyeska's green circle runs and feeling pretty much like a badass. I love the ski lodge culture, I loved all the clunky gear, I love the woman vs. mountain. And I love the amazing, beautiful scenery. You can see Cook Inlet from the ski lift. That year (2007) was a record snowfall, there was over 4 feet of snow on the ground, over 80 feet had fallen so far that winter.

Day 2 of my new life as a skier (still 2007 at Alyeska), I took another private lesson & then rendezvoused with my business partner & his girlfriend, who are both lifelong amazing expert skiers. After watching me scrape out a few wedge turns on the green slope, they pronounced me ready to go to the top. So they snuck me onto the gondola since I didn't have an all mountain ticket (it was about 7 degrees that day, but -5 on the summit, very cold for a lift). We paused at the summit for a hot chocolate which in retrospect very well could have been my last supper. And then they led me out to the trail. They assured me that there were enough gentle intermediate slopes to get down to the bottom, no problem. So we emerge from the summit lodge into this huge bowl, with skiers and snowboarders zipping down slopes that looked to me to be straight vertical, and then flying onto the skinny, steep, winding, switchbacky trail that was my only way back to sea level, 2500 vertical feet and many many more linear feet below me.

Like childbirth, I have managed to block out most of the horror of my prolonged, messy, death-defying slide to the bottom of the hill. I do recall that I fell within the first 20 feet of the run, on the perilous switchbacky part where I could easily have plunged right over the edge. I remember that Tim and Ronda were frighteningly unconcerned for my mortal peril, and that by about 1/4 of the way down, when I had reached the point where I would gladly have traded both of my children for the ability to click my heels and return home, that they were starting to be sort of amused by my twisted interactions with gravity. They started naming my falls. "Ooh, that one looked like a spider" they chuckled as I slid down an icy rock face in crab walk position. "Ouch, the wheelbarrow looked like it stung a bit."

I am told that all skiers have a "then my friends dragged me to the top of the mountain and let me go" story. And maybe this is some secret ritual, a way of separating out those individuals who are highly evolved enough to realize that a sport where you can drop endless cash and risk your life at every turn while suffering the most uncomfortable footwear ever...well, maybe Darwin intervenes on behalf of those folks who know better. I'm just not one of the those folks.

So, last year Pete (absolutely thrilled that I have picked up yet another of his bad habits) and I spent some time up in NH, put the girls in ski school, and officially anointed ourselves as a ski family. And despite the rented gear, too-long snowpants, unyielding nose running, my many, many falls down mountains in AK, CO, and NH, and the harsh realization that I will probably never evolve much beyond "average," well...I return.

This weekend we questioned our judgment when the weather folks predicted record lows, but we decided to give it a go, and had an amazing time. Nearly a foot of fresh powder fell over the course of the weekend, and the conditions though cold, were ideal. I took another lesson & have just about graduated from pizza to french fry, and can finally do a hockey stop, at least on one side (the other side is still more of a hockey pause). Emma is now safely skiing some of the shorter blue runs, and when Sofia actually pays attention she is probably the most naturally gifted skier in the family. (Unfortunately, she is also the one most likely to ski into a snowboarder in the lift line, or fall down when it is completely flat & then refuse to get up. But I remind myself, she's only 4).

Our routine is ski school for the kids in the morning, then ski together as a family on the lower mountain in the afternoon. Pete & I switch off kids. Emma is more fun to ski with because she can take more challenging runs, but it is tiring for me because I have trouble matching her speed, and end up either passing her or way behind her. She is also a lot harder to help up when she falls. Fia is limited to a few of the easier runs, but she's much easier to pick up when she falls. So yesterday, I skied a few runs with her down a fairly underutilized green run, which Pete convinced her was her own secret run that she discovered. So I told Fia that since she had discovered it, she had naming rights. And thus there is a new run on Cannon Mountain, off the Tuckerbrook lift, called the Unicorn Mermaid Fairy Ladybug Princess Sparkle Sofia Run.